Indiana University proposes lowest tuition, fee increases in more than 35 years

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Tuition and fee rates for Indiana resident undergraduate students would increase by an average of 1.75 percent each of the next two academic years under recommendations made today by Indiana University President Michael A. McRobbie to the university's Board of Trustees.

Resident tuition and fee rates at IU Bloomington and IUPUI are recommended to increase by 1.75 percent each of the next two academic years. Tuition and fee increases at IU's five regional campuses also will average 1.75, with individual campus increases ranging from 1.3 percent to 2.2 percent as IU continues to move toward standardized tuition rates at its regional campuses.

Non-resident tuition and fees would increase 2.75 percent each of the next two years at IU Bloomington; 1.75 percent at IUPUI; and from 1.5 to 2 percent at IU's regional campuses, under these recommendations.

IU's recommended increases for resident undergraduate students are below the non-binding target of 2 percent recommended by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education this month.

The IU Board of Trustees will hold a public meeting to hear comment on the university's recommendations on June 5 at the IUPUI Campus Center in Indianapolis. The meeting also will be streamed live online at broadcast.iu.edu. Full details on the hearing and how members of the public can participate are available at www.iu.edu/~tuition.

The increases recommended by McRobbie, which are the lowest since the late 1970s, constitute the latest effort by IU -- which, at its Bloomington campus, already offers the lowest average net cost of attendance in the Big Ten -- to continue to provide an affordable IU education to its students, many of whom will see no increase in tuition and fees over the next two years.

Starting this fall, juniors and seniors who are on track to graduate in four years will receive an on-time completion award that will offset any increase in tuition and fees for up to two years, effectively freezing their instructional costs as long as they remain on a path to graduate in four years.

"Indiana University has consistently demonstrated in recent years its commitment to providing a world-class education to our students at as affordable a cost as possible," McRobbie said. "The modest increases recommended for the next two academic years, along with programs such as our on-time completion award and our summer tuition discount, will allow IU to remain one of the best educational values in the Big Ten and across the nation.

"We are deeply appreciative of the Indiana General Assembly's decision to appropriate additional funds to the university over the next two years as recommended by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, as well as to our alumni and donors, whose extraordinary generosity has allowed IU to greatly increase financial aid to our students over the past several years. Likewise, our employees have worked tirelessly in recent years to find operational efficiencies that have allowed us to control our costs."

Under the university's recommendation, tuition and mandatory fees for Indiana resident students at IU Bloomington will increase from $10,033 in 2012-13 to $10,209 in 2013-14. At IUPUI, resident tuition and fees would go from $8,605 to $8,756 under the recommendation. A detailed breakdown of the recommended tuition and mandatory fees is available online.

The university's tuition recommendations also call for modest increases across most of IU's graduate programs and, on average, represent the smallest biennial increases since the late 1970s. Indiana resident graduate students across all campuses will see tuition increase from 0 to 3 percent each of the next two years.

Tuition for non-resident graduate students would increase from 0 to 6 percent over each of the next two years, depending on the program. Recommended graduate school increases, separated by school, are also available within the recommended tuition and mandatory fees document.